Bret Devereaux

Why? I think it is because the old Cold War American alliance system - of which NATO is a crucial component - leaves an insufficient pool of real power to balance *against* the United States. China and Russia struggle to find friends, because all the good friends are taken. 7/20

Going by the IMF rankings, of the top 10 economies in the world (by raw GDP), 7 are in the US-NATO-and-Friends (henceforth, 'the West' for convenience) camp. Of the top 20, at least 12 are (one might quibble the figure as high as 14, I think). 8/20

A lot of those US-aligned countries are 'under-militarized' sure. Some of them may not enhance American military power or projection much. They may effectively be liabilities (of course some are very much not)... 9/20

...but their US alignment takes that GDP - and thus that potential military capacity, if those economies were ever militarized - off of the table. That, in turn, effects the balancing calculus... 10/20

...because it leaves too few pieces on the board for a direct challenge. The classic example of this must be the Reinsurance Treaty (1887) - by essentially taking Russia 'off the table' Bismark could ensure France would struggle at best to pull together enough allies... 11/20

...to revisit the verdict of 1871 (until they blew it) I'd contend the Romans managed the same thing in Italy from 295 to 218BC and again from 202 to 91BC; it sure wasn't that none of the Italian allies didn't want to break free (see Fronda, Between Rome&Carthage (2010)...12/20

...but absent Hannibal stomping around, after Sentinum, there wasn't enough capacity to band together around the usual discontents (Gauls, Samnites) to make balancing feasible. Roman missteps created a situation in 91BC where that was no longer true - like we're doing now 13/20

The value of NATO - of most of the US-aligned security agreements, formal and informal - is thus less what they do for us, as what they are *not* doing, in our interest. By taking so many potential powerful potential disruptors 'off the table'...14/20